Editor's Note

The Charge

Once upon a time…Jerry Lewis made this middling movie.

The Case

When his beloved father dies, Fella (Jerry Lewis) is left in the care of his
evil stepfamily—an incredibly mean mother (Judith Anderson) and two
baneful brothers, Maximilian (Henry Silva, the original Ocean's Eleven, Never a Dull
Moment) and Rupert (Robert Hutton, Trog, Tales from the Crypt). Under
their terrible tutelage, Fella is a veritable slave, acting more like a servant
than a member of the clan. While his stepmother and stepsiblings spend money
like it's growing on trees, Fella lives a humble life of incredibly limited
means.

Such extravagant ways have finally taken their toll on the moochers and they
need a moolah-making idea, pronto. Mother decides to spend the last of the
wealth on a fancy-dress ball for a visiting dignitary, her Royal Highness, the
Princess Charming (Anna Maria Alberghetti, Here Comes the Groom, Kismet). Mom thinks that Rupert will be
able to woo her majesty into a profitable proposal of marriage. The boys have a
plan of their own. Seems that Fella's father left a fortune for his son buried
somewhere on the estate. Fella occasionally dreams of the location, but fails to
recall where it is when he wakes. The boys will want to follow him around while
he sleepwalks to hopefully find the cash.

As the gala draws near and the princess arrives, Fella is excited. Yet his
family won't let him near the visiting royal. Thankfully, Fella has some help in
the guise of a Fairy Godfather (Ed Wynn, Mary Poppins, Babes in Toyland). He will help Fella get
to the ball, but he must return home by midnight, or all the magic
will…hey, wait a minute. Where have we heard this all before?

More hindered than helped by the fairy tale format, and less reliant on
Lewis's manic persona than perhaps any of his solo films since The Delicate Delinquent,
Cinderfella (or as it is symbolically represented, CINDERfELLA) is
Jerry Lewis at his most mediocre. This is not to say that the film isn't
entertaining, or filled with some simple delights. But the last thing an
audience expects from a Lewis comedy is something bordering on the tragic or
weepy. Cinderfella has far too many maudlin moments, times when Jerry's
character is lamenting his sad-sack life and losing out to his high-maintenance
stepbrothers. While it can be said that the script by Frank Tashlin (the
ex-Warner's animation genius also directed the film) does a good job of turning
the classic feminine wish-fulfillment tale into a matter of male identity, there
is simply too much sloppy syrup here and not enough Le Genius insanity.
We want to see Jerry Lewis going apesh*t for 90 minutes, not musing over his
ill-considered lot in life.

Part of the problem with Cinderfella is that producer Lewis wanted to
craft a sweet, sentimental family film for a holiday audience (Lewis planned,
with Paramount, for the movie to be a Christmas 1960 release). As a result, the
overall tone here is not as chaotic and clothesline as other Lewis madcap
fracases. Tashlin must maintain the parameters of Fella's formulaic existence,
and this over-reliance on narrative and exposition is deadly to Lewis's brand of
all-over-the-map anarchy. With Jerry hemmed in and kept in check, we get none of
the classic cacophony of the Lewis lunacy we come to expect. Indeed, there are
only two or three outstanding showcase set pieces for the comic to work his
weirdo genius. Anyone who's seen an MDA Telethon will recognize Lewis's classic
drummer pantomime (he plays along with a song on the radio), and we do get an
extended section where Fella must simultaneously eat and wait on his
family, servant style. But the rest of the movie is just meandering pap.

The supporting cast is indeed excellent, though they are not given much to
do. Judith Anderson (before she was a Dame, or T'Lar in The Search for
Spock) is an interesting choice to play a mean matron. There is a depth to
her performance that illustrates her longtime legend as a great actress. As
Fella's wicked stepbrothers, Henry Silva and Robert Hutton are all flash, with
very little fleshing out. Provided to make Lewis's peculiar visage stand out
even more peculiarly, they are pretty boy pawns in the staid story. Even famed
comedian Ed Wynn is more serious than silly here (though he gets a dopey drag
moment toward the end). Like everything else in Cinderfella, we see more
solemnity than surreality, something that undermines this type of movie. Indeed,
the pace is passive, with far too many elements of the basic fantasy foundation
as the focus, leaving very little leeway for Lewis to mug and monkey around.

And then there is the music. Not the score, featuring the phenomenal big
band brassiness of Count Basie and his orchestra (literally exemplifying the
meaning of ring-a-ding swing). No, Cinderfella contains four sour solo
songs for Lewis to croon, and it is obvious why Dean Martin handled most of the
melodies during their famed pairing, to put it mildly. Tinny and harsh, with a
hampering abrasive quality, Lewis really can't sing. Yet he gives it the old
collegiate struggle through some very tired, uninspired numbers. One, in
particular, stands out in its overt strangeness. Anyone familiar with the
musical Carousel knows that Billy Bigelow has a musical soliloquy in
which he makes his innermost thoughts known through an operatic aria. Well,
Lewis gets a similar chance to "sing" his feelings. Shuffling around
the darkness of his cellar, unable to go to the ball, Fella "thinks"
his sentiments, which we hear as a bad bravura bit of Lewis vocalizing. The
sequence is inadvertently hilarious since Fella/Lewis doesn't move his mouth
with the music. Instead, he "expresses" these emotions through some
incredibly hammy gesturing. Every time a song starts, Cinderfella stops
dead. It is up to Tashlin and Lewis to find ways to revive it time and time
again. And sometimes they don't succeed.

Interestingly, like The Disorderly Orderly or The Patsy,
Cinderfella is also a film with an interesting script, filled with
inventive, insightful ideas. Instead of merely granting Fella's wish of being a
"person" (Fella believes in two classes—"persons,"
individuals of importance, and "people," meaning everyone else), his
Fairy Godfather states that Fella is about to represent all men undermined by
the original fable. Seems ever since Cindy's story of landing a perfect prince,
guys around the globe have been living in the long shadows of such a flawless
love. Fella will become a symbol, showing that even an average schlub can land a
sizzling bit of skirt (Anna Maria Alberghetti, in a nothing of a role). The
conversation between Wynn and Lewis is wonderful—warm, rich, and filled
with clever observations. Similarly, near the end, Lewis has a confrontation
about money with his stepfamily, and it too has the ring of realism mixed with
just a little cinematic comeuppance. It's a shame there's not more of it here.
Instead, one gets the impression of omnipresent mandates about keeping this
enchantment as simple and inoffensive as possible. And there is nothing worse
for a comedian known for his hyperactive persona than to be mired in
restrictions of earnestness. Had Lewis been allowed to let loose,
Cinderfella could have been a great satirical statement. Instead, it's
far too light and languid to be considered classic Lewis.

Paramount's presentation of this title also has its issues. The 1.85:1
anamorphic widescreen image is faded, with the usual brightness of the
tantalizing Technicolor muted and muddy here. You can see the primary pizzazz of
the original presentation struggling to get out from under the nondescript
transfer. Unlike other films in this reissue series, Cinderfella looks
its age, and doesn't "pop" with the same sense of newness as, say, The Nutty Professor or The
Patsy. Sonically, the Dolby Digital Mono is excellent, showcasing the overly
orchestrated score by Walter Scharf (a Lewis regular) magnificently, and during
the songs, you can tell when Lewis is recorded "live" or merely
lip-syncing to a backing track. Such audio detail is praiseworthy in what is, by
today's standards, a very primitive single-speaker technology.

There are only two bonuses on this DVD, and both are fairly perfunctory. The
five minutes of bloopers are interesting, but not really revealing. They mostly
consist of Lewis cracking up and goofing off for the camera. The full-length
commentary by Lewis (and for some strange reason, singer Steve Lawrence) is also
a letdown. With both men so wrapped up in watching the film that they fail to
offer much narration, this incredibly sparse track provides little in the way of
context on the making of, or behind the scenes facets of, the film. While Lewis
does discuss the importance of music to a film, and how he had to be
hospitalized after the classic staircase sequence (he claims to have climbed 67
steps in nine seconds before collapsing), this is mostly a chance for Lewis and
Lawrence to goof on and glorify the movie and its makers. There is nothing
essential about this discussion.

Had it found a way to mix more of Lewis's patented pratfalling peculiarity
into its retrofitting of the archetypal fable, Cinderfella could have
been a classic. As it stands, it's an interesting experiment with more miscues
than merriment. Lewis and Tashlin needed their own goofy guardian angel to guide
them through this baffling bewilderment. Maybe the results wouldn't have been so
pedestrian.